The Premier of New South Wales put her money where her mouth is today and made a further financial commitment to tackling her priority issue of affordable housing by announcing today 2200 new affordable homes to be delivered from the $1.1billion Social and Affordable Housing Fund.

This comes on the same day as the Federal Treasurer announced the Affordable Housing Implementation Taskforce which ultimately will work at the highest level with organisations such as PowerHousing, its members and with State Governments to deliver the best return on investment in affordable housing.

Nicholas Proud CEO of PowerHousing Australia which represents 28 of Australia’s largest Community Housing Providers (CHPs) welcomed the agreement to develop the homes with two Members of PowerHousing – Compass Housing Services and SGCH winning a significant proportion of homes from the tender.

Affordable housing provision is a national issue and the NSW Government is providing funding measures to boost social and affordable housing stock while improving the lives of vulnerable people.

The combination of Government program and professional Community Housing Provider capacity has meant that many more affordable homes will be delivered here. This announcement has meant that the sector has opened up significant finance which supports the CHP sector to provide the homes.

Ultimately access to new finance streams as displayed here which comes over longer terms allows for best return on Government Investment with greater affordable housing delivered at lower cost to taxpayers – which is a win win.

As demonstrated today, New South Wales are rolling out some of the largest social housing programs in the history of the state and their benchmark of commitment gives confidence that the Premier’s previous commitments to affordable housing has credibility.

These announcements show strong Federal and State Government acknowledgement of our CHP Members capacity to be commercially astute to achieve economies of scale and work with Government, tier one/innovative financial lenders and scale developers to design and construct affordable housing options. The options ultimately require all partners at scale to deliver high value returns for the tax payer combined with holistic housing outcomes for the recipient.